


stable (decaying) orbit

by electricshoop



Category: Neon Birds Trilogy
Genre: M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Set during the events of books 2 (Cyber Trips) and 3 (Beta Hearts), brief mentions of suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27335446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoop/pseuds/electricshoop
Summary: The world is ending. Flover would contemplate the upsides to this development, if he wasn't too busy acting without thinking and going against all logic.
Relationships: Flover Nakamura/Luke Bible
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	stable (decaying) orbit

**Author's Note:**

> This is fanfiction for an exclusively German book trilogy I haven't even finished yet, why did I write it in English, we don't know. 
> 
> Some quick context: It's the Neon Birds Trilogy written by Marie Graßhoff, featuring the books Neon Birds, Cyber Trips, and Beta Hearts. It's sci-fi.
> 
> Setting: 2101. A few decades ago, military scientists developed an AI (KAMI), programmed it into nanites and injected it into soldiers to Improve Them(TM) and win the Second Cold War. Stuff went wrong. KAMI managed to re-program itself and evolve on its own and ended up basically turning off the soldiers' emotions and sense of morality. Birds that got into the closed-off testing facility spread the nanites into all parts of the world, and the infected (moja) are now A Huge Problem because they keep attacking people and infecting them if they get too close. A lot of plot (two books worth) happens, and now KAMI's "essence" has possessed one of the moja and is like super powerful and walks around because it wants to heal the world by basically turning everyone into moja. It's sure it's doing the right thing. The characters featured are Flover, son of one of the women who basically rule the world now (the "United Nations," because everything is utopian on paper) who was forced into a military career by her, and his roommate Luke, who was also at a military academy but had Ulterior Motives All Along (good-natured ones.) ...I think that's all the context one needs to read this fic. ...It may be _more_ context than is needed to read this fic. Or the wrong context. I'm just very excited about this book series.
> 
> (But also, if something is still confusing or somebody actually reads this and wants More context, please feel free to ask, I'm super ready to yell about it. It's brilliant. ...I mean, I wrote English fic for a non-existent (and in theory German) fandom.)

It takes a while until Flover manages to convince Luke that they both desperately need a break. They're in a hurry to get to Berlin, and as much as having a plan, no matter how poorly thought out it may be, seems to have lifted Luke's spirit, the urgency is still there, underneath the grins his best – only – friend flashes in his direction.

But Luke needs sleep, and Flover does, too, and even if he couldn't be paid to sit down behind the wheel of their way-out-of-date vehicle, he can't sleep even sat in the passenger's seat. He's so used to travelling via Cyber Trips or his TransPhone, or via Flash Trains every now and then – this is too bumpy; he keeps getting sick.

So they rest. Properly, by the side of the road. No signs of anything or anyone infected nearby (none but Flover himself, that is – he pushes the thought away; he'd just stopped feeling sick.) Finally, they relax.

They lie down on the roof of the car. It's been night for a while now and the solar panels have cooled, even if they've still got the converted energy stored, and the cool night air bites through Flover's jacket, but for the first time in days that feel, even looking back with clarity and calmness, like weeks– for the first time in days, he can breathe a little more easily.

Luke is lying next to him quietly, his breathing calm and even too, so much so that Flover turns his head to check if he's just fallen asleep already a few times. But, no. He's awake, staring up at the dark night sky. The stars are countless and impossibly bright. Flover has never seen them like this, not even in Antarctica. The light pollution of their military bases or the loud neon lights of any of the bigger cities had always dulled the night sky. It's beautiful. Breathtaking.

Flover has no idea how much time passes; how long they stay quiet for. Luke's presence reassures him, calms him, but there's other things – ugly, sneaky thoughts that try to push their way from the back of his head again and again.

The fact that he's infected, most of all, is what keeps him awake. The fact that he's endangering Luke just by being near him. If something happened to him – if it was his fault – he doesn't think he could forgive himself for–

 _Not that I'd have to forgive myself for it,_ he thinks. _Once the nanites take over my brain, I won't feel anything anymore._

Part of that thought is … calming, much the same way that Luke's still form next to him is. He squeezes his eyes shut, doesn't want to think about it further, and a moment later, as if he'd sensed this quiet shift, this tension, Luke moves almost imperceptibly and grabs Flover's hand.

Flover opens his eyes again. Luke's hand is cold, but his grip is tight. Safe. Anchoring. Flover smiles, almost against his will, and squeezes softly. Luke immediately returns the gesture.

All tension disappears, and the sky is black as ink and the stars almost blindingly bright, and they've never held hands before. All tension disappears.

*

Berlin is a nightmare, and the memory of these fucking cultists throwing themselves to their knees in front of him as if "infected" was synonymous with "enlightened" will stick with him. Sticks with him even as he leaves. Sticks with him even as he leaves Luke behind.

(Luke is all that's on his mind, even while he tries and fails to get the mental image of the DVM members out of his head. It's all about Luke. He feels so, so sick, he can feel KAMI's grip on him getting stronger, like a puppeteer pulling the strings of his puppet with more dedication, and he can't, he won't be the one, the… the _thing_ that seals Luke's fate.)

((And then he stands in front of Shiva, the blue flashes dancing all over the street, the people all panicking-hesitating-realising-screaming-then-surrendering until their eyes spark blue, and Flover thinks, if he'd known that this would happen, if he'd known that the embodiment of KAMI would show up here now and turn the entire fucking megametoprolis into its play dolls, maybe he would have stayed. Maybe he would have stayed, heart petty, trying to pretend that there was something darkly poetic about it being him who gets to infect the person dearest to him.))

She – it – looks so much like Luke that looking at it hurts. Up close, it's undeniable that they are – were – twins. Flover feels like crying.

And then it takes him with it.

(((And it tells him that it can't control him, for some reason, that he's immune, or something adjacent to it, and he wishes he'd just stayed with Luke. He's left him alone in a crumbling city.)))

*

It asks him questions, about complicated concepts like morality that overwhelm him; they never covered this kind of shit in the academy.

And about emotions.

It asks about emotions, and Flover struggles to explain in terms that it can understand, and finds that he desperately _wants_ it to understand.

(He'd never had friends. While other children and teenager had played outside or met each other to go to the movies or, fuck, just study together, he'd been at home, isolated, his mother ever-watching, always ready to rip his scribbled drawings out from under his hands if he dared to avert his eyes from his text books for too long. She'd been the only constant, her words, the law.

Until Luke.

Luke had saved him, he thinks. Luke, so comfortable with small talk and parties, so optimistic, so bright and warm, like the sun.

Yes. Luke was the sun, and he, the moon, held in stable orbit, circling around him, grounded by and drawn to him–)

He wants it to understand and doesn't know what he wants it to understand.

(It doesn't understand. But it listens, and it never attacks him, and Flover is, a few times, close to asking him what it thinks it can read in his eyes.)

*

They fuck it up. Flover thinks they could have talked to it, might have been able to strike a deal. Gain some time to regroup, replan, at the very least. But Alaska fucking Pershing and Liza fucking Moore (mother, he thinks, but just briefly) and… and also Byth and Okijen; they fuck it up, and now who knows if it'll be as merciful when they next encounter it.

*

He doesn't take his eyes off Luke. The bed feels almost too comfortable after all the makeshift mattresses, but the most important part is that Luke is here, blind on one eye for now at least but here, alive, and Flover won't let anything happen to him. 

Luke looks tired, looks about ready to fall asleep, but he keeps talking quietly, about how he doesn't know why, but the dragon (mother, Flover thinks, but just briefly) seems to have taken the caretaking duty he'd shoved onto her seriously – Gerta is fine. Laid an egg, even. Flover smiles and presses his face into Luke's shoulder. Of course he'd be worried about this. The world is ending, but the chicken's fine.

There's two beds in this room, but Flover has, without asking, without _thinking_ , really, just taken his place next to Luke. Has squeezed himself onto the small bed frame right next to him, and Luke hadn't commented on it one way or the other. They're close now, as close as they've never been before, their chests pressed together, their breathing matched to the respective other's, Luke's arm wrapped around him and his hand against his back, and Flover thinks about how Luke had grabbed and held his hand. They'd woken up with their fingers still intertwined.

"I'm so sorry," Luke suddenly says. Flover almost startles a little and tries to put the word into context, but fails.

"What do you mean?"

"For lying to you. I lied to you for years." Luke isn't looking at him – his eyes are closed. He tightens his grip around Flover, this half hug.

He shakes his head. "It's fine," he says, because it is. Because that's the past, and this is now, and the world is ending, and they are, most likely, all going to die. Soon.

Luke takes a shuddering breath, but his voice is determined and firm when he speaks again. "You're way too cool with this, Flover. That's– That's not something you should just… forgive me for so easily."

Flover suppresses his instinct to immediately object and instead thinks about it for a moment. He… doesn't know if that's true. He knows of Luke's tendency to blame himself, to try and take care of everything and everyone – that's a burden they both put on their own shoulders regularly – and, also… it's Luke. Luke, who saved his life. Luke. The only reason he keeps going. The only reason he's still alive.

Flover is certain that if it hadn't been for Luke, he'd either lifted the weapon to his head himself, after putting on his ClearView Glasses, after realising he was infected – or he'd actively seeked out one of the soldiers to take care of the issue for him.

(Part of Flover is certain that if it hadn't been for Luke, moving in with him, he hadn't lived long enough to come this far in the first place. He swallows these words down, but they leave a bitter taste and a sharp burning sensation behind his closed eyelids.)

He shakes his head again. "It's fine," he whispers, voice much less steady than Luke's, and when he opens his eyes, he has to rapidly blink away the tears until the silhouette of LukeLukeLuke, the only family he has (needs, he thinks, and doesn't think about his mother) is clearly visible again. 

Luke is looking right back, and for a few moments, that's all there is. Their eyes locked, and everything else falls out of focus: the bustling on the corridors, the footsteps, the occasional, busy beeping of phones, the hushed conversations of people organising and planning and strategizing. (The fact that somebody could open the door to ask for _Captain Nakamura_ , because something came up, because something is going to shit again.)

Flover leans in and presses his lips to Luke's, kisses him, clumsily, unpractised. Luke makes a small sound, surprised, and for a split second, Flover is sure that he just ruined everything, but then he can feel Luke's finger tighten in Flover's shirt and he kisses back.

(Without active input, all on its own, his mind goes back to KAMI, to the conversations he's had with it, and he's vaguely aware that even now, there are so many emotions he still couldn't determine or explain.)

He presses himself closer against Luke and lifts a hand to trail his fingers over his cheek, his neck, brushes the tips against his soft hair.

(This is a terrible idea, part of him yells at him. (Luke had told him, on one of their trips via train, about his relationship to his twin sister. How everyone, Shiva herself and their parents and teachers and friends, had told him that he's too reliant upon her–))

But Luke is all he has left. Luke is the sun.

(This is a terrible idea.)

This is a terrible idea.

Flover kisses him more desperately and with more dedication, clumsier and more unpractised. Luke reciprocates, and that's all Flover wants to deal with right now.

The world is ending, after all. There most likely won't be any consequences to face.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I'm [on tumblr](https://electricshoop.tumblr.com).


End file.
